Brands win by supporting their customers as heroes, not by being the hero themselves. Nike, SportsCenter, and Chipotle do this well. A coffee shop called Joe's Downtown went viral with a free-coffee dance challenge that turned customers into the story.
The brand is never the hero. It's usually the people, the consumers are the hero. The brand is kind of a mentor. If you take a look at the best branding of all time, which arguably I think is Nike, Nike's not the hero. The athlete is the hero and Nike's the mentor just helping them along. Again, integrating your brand into the story without being the centerpiece of it. So we talked SportsCenter, we talked Chipotle, those are huge brands. What if I'm a small brand? Are there things that they can do as well that don't cost a ton of money?
I just saw a video that I loved. It's by Joe's Downtown, which is like a coffee shop, and they had a video that was like telling their customers, uh, show us your dance moves and we'll give you free coffee, right? And the video is like a great vibe, right? It's like, it's just a montage of people dancing and having a great time and cheering each other on and stuff, and it's such like a trending song, which is also perfect.
